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Abu Ala al-Afri
Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli (1959-24 March 2016), also known as Abu Ala al-Afri or Abu Ali al-Anbari, was the Deputy Leader of the Islamic State from 22 April 2015 after Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was wounded and paralyzed in an airstrike during Operation Inherent Resolve. On 13 May 2015 he was allegedly killed in an airstrike, but it was found out that the United States did not bomb any mosques and that the video used by Iraq as "proof" was a 4 May airstrike and not on a mosque. On 25 March 2016, he was confirmed dead in a US special forces operation. In April 2016, The Daily Beast reported that he was the same person as Syrian ISIS governor Abu Ali al-Anbari, stating that Iraqi and American intelligence sources confused their noms de guerre and believed that they were two separate people; the belief that al-Anbari was a former Major-General in the Iraqi Army was a hoax. Biography Islamic State of Iraq commander Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli was born in 1959 in Mosul, Ninawa Governorate, Kingdom of Iraq to a Sunni Muslim family. He became a follower of Mustafa Setmariam Nasar and al-Qaeda, and was also a physics teacher in Tal Afar, with dozens of publications and sharia studies of his own. In 1998 he joined al-Qaeda after training in Afghanistan and earned the trust and respect of Osama Bin Laden, and returned to Iraq in 2004 to join al-Qaeda in Iraq under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He oversaw sharia activities in northern Iraq and became the local AQI leader in Mosul. After Zarqawi, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi's deaths by 2010, Osama wanted al-Afri to be made the new leader of the Islamic State of Iraq. However, Haji Bakr wanted Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to be made leader instead, and he was confirmed as the new ISI leader. Islamic State deputy leader In 2012, al-Afri escaped from an Iraqi Army prison and moved to Syria to fight in the Syrian Civil War. He joined forces with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who renamed the Islamic State of Iraq/al-Qaeda in Iraq to "the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria", which became a caliphate on 27 June 2014. al-Afri was made the Deputy Caliph of the Islamic State after al-Baghdadi was wounded in an airstrike in March 2015, replacing Abu Ali al-Anbari as second-in-command. Abu Ala al-Afri was seen as a possible successor to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi if he was killed, but he could only be a caretaker, as he was not Arab (he could not trace his ancestry to Muhammad). On 13 May 2015, Iraqi officials claimed that a United States-led coalition airstrike on a mosque as a part of Operation Inherent Resolve killed him. It was later found out that the video that the Iraqi government used as "proof" of his death was a 4 May 2015 airstrike, and the United States said that it had not bombed any mosques. Death On the morning of 24 March 2016, United States Green Berets chased his car in helicopters as it traveled along the Iraq-Syria border, intending to capture him. A firefight ensued between the special forces and al-Afri and three other ISIS jihadists, and all of the terrorists were killed in the raid. Electronics and other documents were seized by the special forces for intelligence purposes; al-Afri's death was a major blow to the Islamic State. In April 2016, it was revealed that he was the same person as Abu Ali al-Anbari. Category:1959 births Category:Iraqis Category:AQI Category:Al-Qaeda Category:Turkmen Category:ISIL Category:Sunnis Category:Killed Category:2016 deaths Category:Iraqi Turkmen Category:Iraqi Islamists Category:Islamists